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What makes an online video click?

Last year, leveraging on the 23rd James Bond movie Skyfall, Coca-Cola ran a “Coke Zero 007 Challenge” in London, where it challenged commuters to jump through a series of hoops to win a pair of tickets. As contestants completed the task, they were filmed and the video was placed online.

Within days of posting the campaign video online, it garnered hundreds of thousands of views worldwide.

For online videos, great content is invaluable, but on the technical front, the length and pace of the video, its precision or rawness in post-production and its interactive features, all play a part in sustaining the attention of the audience.

But is it important for videos to have the same production value as traditional television programmes?

“There are two conflicting aspects,” says Mark Laudi, managing director of Hong Bao Media, who says the good news is audiences are used to low-budget productions because much of what they view on YouTube is produced by amateur video enthusiasts.

“As a result, they expect videos to be authentic, spontaneous, interesting, quirky and entertaining.”

On the other hand, producing programmes which meet your corporate and branding guidelines cannot be left to amateurs, Laudi adds.

“Bottom line is the need to hire those who can produce authentic content.”

Then there is the distribution aspect of online videos. While marrying online videos with social media is a push in the right direction what else is needed for an online video to become successful and help brands engage customers?

Time to set a social reminder

Consumers today are increasingly defining themselves by the need to share, connect and broadcast and hence, strategic placement and accessibility of these videos become primary in engaging the audience.

“It’s about where the link to the video is placed and with online you can place it in any publication, site, section, blog or forum that is related to your content,” says Stuart Edwards, managing director of Profero APAC.

“With the abundance of content on the world wide web, the upload-and-they-will-come approach is already archaic.”

What’s even better is for brands to identify niche online communities and influencers to promote the online video for it to get noticed, while using “syndication services” to increase reach.

“According to the social video platform, and syndication services such as YTM, your video has less than .00001% chance of going viral on its own so don’t forget to enable simple sharing techniques. Distribution of online videos is often overlooked,” says Tuomas Peltoniemi, head of digital, TBWA\Group Singapore.

He also suggests brands leverage on social media listening tools that can help identify what people are saying about the brand before creating video content. This will ensure greater relevancy to the brand’s target audience.

Read the full article in Marketing Magazine Singapore’s April edition.